Magics of Dishonor
by Ravenclaw42
Summary: Tom Riddle faces down a group of bullies in a corridor... and a hint of Lord Voldemort shows through that too-normal facade. R/R, please.


A/N: This is a spur-of-the-moment story. I wrote it in less than a day. It's a prequel of sorts to my Blood Magic series (as of yet unposted) -- but it's a stand alone short story as well. Set during Tom Riddle's fourth year at Hogwarts. (Dagan Avery is the father of the Avery mentioned in GoF.)  
  
Disclaimer: Except for the plot, the suit of armor, and the name Nye Murdock (which I made up), I own nothing pertaining to Harry Potter. I'm not making any money off this, no offense intended, blah blah, etc. You know the drill.  
  
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The title is a play on the phrase matters of honor.' One of the fundamental ideas in the Blood Magic series is that there are three major types of magic: the magic of love undying, the magic of the trusting promise, and the magic of family, of blood. Underneath each of these is its Dark reversal -- love scorned, the broken word, and one family member's blood spilt by another.  
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Magics of Dishonor  
  
HEY! Riddle!  
  
Tom kept running. If he ran long enough, if he could only hold out longer than they -- and usually he could, easily -- then he'd be safe; he'd be free. But the other boys kept chasing him, running him down like a wild animal in a maze.  
  
He reached out blindly to grab a corner and use the leverage to wing himself onwards, faster still. But his fingers were slick with sweat, and they slipped; he lost his balance, sprawling headlong onto the floor, knocking his head against the polished steel of the boot of a suit of armor. The helmet looked down at him pitifully, creaking its old joints in a rumbling pattern of words.  
  
_... hello again, young one... how many of your kind I've seen, in all these days since I was set here by the Founding Four to guard these halls from evil.  
_  
And here is evil, thought Tom, blinking away tears of pain, struggling to stand. Protect the innocent, as you were meant to do from the beginning.  
  
_What is innocent?_ asked the suit of armor.  
  
Tom, gasping, rose to his feet and tottered forward for a meter or two. His side was sharp and bright with pain: a stitch from too much running. He looked up the helmet's visor, imagining the long-lost eyes of whatever knight must have inhabited the suit ages ago.  
  
he rasped.  
  
He could hear the pounding footsteps behind him. He had had a good lead; but the fall had hampered him badly. This close, he knew the chase was pointless; so he turned to stand his ground, to face the enemy. Behind his back the suit of armor laboriously pulled its old steel joints into movement, clanking away down the hall.  
  
The first boy rounded the corner -- Avery, the leader of the pack of boys who had betrayed Tom's friendship, betrayed his trust. Tom had given them everything -- his ambitions, his dreams, his secret name -- and they had destroyed it all with a slow, steady degradation of his words. Their small put-downs and their offhand insults had fallen on Tom like an icepick: a little puncture here, a flake chipped off there. And, known only vaguely to Tom himself, a festering infection started to develop in the wounds, growing until it had consumed his mind.  
  
Finally he had thrown them away. They treated him with irreverence and a lack of respect; so he discarded them, as they deserved, or so he thought. They shouldn't have minded. They didn't care about him anyway. They shouldn't have cared that the bottom-feeder of the gang had decided to drop away.  
  
But they cared. Oh yes, they cared far too much.  
  
Hey, Voldie! C'mere, why don't you just -- Dagan Avery skidded around the corner and nearly tripped over his own feet, suddenly faced by Tom himself. Dagan was taken aback for a full three seconds, caught off guard by the pale image of Tom, a tall boy to start with -- half a head taller than Dagan himself -- no longer standing with slumped shoulders and a hunkering posture. Tom's dark, sweaty hair hung in his face, and his pale gray, coldly calculating eyes were boring into Dagan's, tinted with an expression that Dagan would have given anything to never have to see again. He was sane, _too_ sane... and he looked...  
  
He looked like he knew exactly what he was doing. And after chasing an apparently helpless boy down school corridors for ten minutes, that was an expression Dagan was completely unprepared for.  
  
A small streak of blood was winding its way out from under Tom's unkempt hair, staining his paper-white skin a vibrant red. For a moment Dagan thought he looked like a corpse. But then he moved, disproving the theory; he raised one thin hand to the blood, smearing it across his cheek and bringing away a single droplet.  
  
He licked his finger, and smiled mirthlessly at Dagan.  
  
Four other fourth year Slytherin boys came to a skidding, bumping halt behind Dagan, who shook his head resurfaced to the business at hand.  
  
he sneered. Should've stopped when we asked.  
  
The Dark Lord's not so lordly, sang a scrawny boy at Tom's right.  
  
said Nye Murdock, his dark brown eyes flashing. You know a vole is a rodent, don't you, Lord Voldemort?  
  
Lord Rat.  
  
Lord Mudblood.  
  
A burst of snickering broke out among the boys, but none of them took their eyes off of Tom. Why so quiet, Tommy? asked Dagan. Vole got your tongue?  
  
But during those few moments of taunting, Tom's mind had gone completely clear of all distractions; and every spell he needed, every curse and jinx and hex he had ever learned, were free and open to him. Tongue.' The word offered up so many possibilities...  
  
Tom's wand was in his hand before any of the boys even saw him move. He deliberately aimed out of harm's way, and hissed,   
  
A lock of Dagan's blond hair flurried away and fell to the floor. His scalp was barely grazed by the cutting spell, no more a cut than Tom's own; but still he screeched with fear and pain and surprise.  
  
Tom stepped forward and lowered his wand to point at Dagan's chest, point-blank range. he whispered, and know now, whose tongue I _could_ have. Just a little lower, Avery. A little lower and you'd have had a real reason to scream.  
  
Dagan's eyes were wide, and he nodded jerkily. Tom pulled away, flicking his wand out of its dangerous angle with a small, seemingly practiced move.  
  
Dagan, Nye and the others were now beginning to look at Tom in a new light -- he was neither good nor bad, nor was he a tool, or a scapegoat. He was something else entirely. He was _right.  
_  
Tom looked each one of them in the eye, and when he spoke, his voice rasped -- like an old voice, decades older than the tall fourteen-year-old who now faced a gang of school bullies. Now leave me be. And remember not to take my name in vain. Someday you'll answer to it with your lives, and the lives of your children's children. The Dark Lord will have his army.  
  
The boys stared. This wasn't at all what they had bargained for.  
  
Tom bellowed, flicking a handful of stinging silver sparks at them. Dagan, being closest, got a faceful of tiny flecks of fire; but this time he hardly even noticed. He and the others boys turned tail and scampered away as fast as they could.  
  
Tom slumped against a wall as they rounded the corner. Where had that come from? He hadn't formed the words himself, he was sure of that. Something... he felt that something was going extremely wrong, something about him was changing, and he wasn't sure if he liked it. But even with his uncertainties, the attack had felt good -- not like praise, or a good night's sleep; but good like breaking something no one cares about, or hitting a wall when you're angry. Tom allowed himself a small smile, and slowly levered himself away from the wall, turning towards the staircase down the hall that would eventually take him back to the Slytherin common room.  
  
The suit of armor was standing next to the stair entrance, looking blankly at the far wall, as it always had and always would.  
  
As Tom neared, it creaked its helmet around, its visor staring at him emptily.  
  
_Prey,_ it groaned, thinking in the tone of a dozen deep-voiced, rusty hinges.  
  
Tom smiled at the helmet, a decidedly serpentine air surrounding the expression. Again his voice was deeper, changed; and his words were carefully chosen by a madman living in his head.  
The Devil speaks with my voice, and I welcome Him into my castle.  
  
The suit of armor shuddered, shrieking metallically. Tom laughed, cold and unforgiving.  
  
And when Tom Riddle, a slight boy with a strange nickname had passed away into the shadows of the descending stairs, the suit of armor still stood quietly in the dull stone corridor, empty and still, a single question occupying the spell that constituted its mind.'  
  
What is innocent?  
  
And the answer;  
  
_Prey._


End file.
